My dad was over at my house a few days ago and was reading to my daughter the same book he read to me when I was her age. I remember him reading it to me like it was yesterday and I started thinking about how fast it seems we grow up. Do you ever wish you could freeze time to stay a specific age? For example, I remember 19 being really fun and I wish I could have stayed 19 until I started getting bored with it and wanted to grow up. I wish I could freeze time right now so I could enjoy every aspect of my daughter being 2 because it's so much fun to watch her learn and process things. Focus: If you could freeze time at any age, which would you choose?
Probably right now. Things are good and I am enjoying it all around. Another age would be when I was a little kid and I got to spend a lot of time with my grandparents. My father's father died unexpectedly in his mid-60s and my other grandfather is so far gone in his dementia he doesn't know who I am anymore.
Two ages. 12-14 and 19-23. Both care free eras. My middle school years when I spent the most time with my family around my grandparents farm. Shooting and riding dirt bikes. In my early 20s it was just prime partying fun without many negative consequences.
Freeze your age as were then, or can we take our modern knowledge with us? I'd stop at 23. Young, fit, fully independent and self-sufficient, the world was my fucking oyster, if only I'd taken advantage. Given no modern knowledge, freezing would still afford me the time to figure shit out and make *moves*.
Yeah, no modern knowledge. Just what you know in that moment. So you'd stay 23 until you played it out, felt like you learned everything/did everything you wanted to, and could move on to 24.
I'd prefer to be where I am right now... when I was in my early 20's, I was too stupid to know I was stupid... and I'd much rather have the knowledge and experience that I have now. Think of it like a Flowers For Algernon thing.
I would probably take my life right now. I hae an amazing child and wife that inspire me to be better every day. I own a home. I have a low stress job that pays well. If I could go back to when I was 26, I was a traveling consultant and had amazing fringe benefits. I lived in hotel suites. I drank the finest drink. I ate the best food and partied in the most awesome places. I lived this life every weekend in a different city. Sounds amazing, right? Well it also lead to a shit ton of hangovers and regret. You know what's more amazing? When I do something fun with my son and he smiles and laughs.
I would say right now for so many reasons. I am on the cusp of my next chapter, and who knows, it might be even better than the here and now. I hated being in school. Living at home as a kid was miserable with nothing to do and with parents who are old fashioned and strict . Hawaii was beautiful but the locals and military presense and just far away from everything-ness made life less than enjoyable at times. I currently have a job that is intellectually stimulating and has great benefits and leaves me with enough physical energy to do what ever I feel like in my free time. I have time to pursue hobbies and spend time with loved ones. I am not rich, not by a long shot, but our expenses are covered and we want for very little. I am worried that kids and home purchasing will suck away some of the stuff I love about the here and now so I am trying to enjoy it while I can. I also firmly believe that (offspring specifically) can be the most life changing and fullfilling thing a person can experience, but I want to do it right and that takes a lot of constant hard work. So we wait.
I'm not too wistfully nostalgic for any age in particular so far. I like growing up and getting older, and am driven forward by the hope and expectations that things are just going to keep getting better from here. I know that we're in a very youth-obsessed culture, especially for women, but I'm especially looking forward to getting out of my twenties. I'm supposed to be caught up in some kind of complex about turning 30, but all the women I know who are older than me have been telling me that actually shit is just kind of the worst in your twenties and they couldn't be paid enough to go back to them. That being said, if I had to pick a time to freeze, it would be specifically the summer after high school, but not being 18 as a whole. That was really only the one stretch of time when I was just happy. No conditional "things are good except _____" about it. Sure, now, I'd never want to go back to not having my own place or not being able to drink legally or having to be at all accountable to my dad, but when I was actually going through it those things didn't bother me so much. I was excited about graduating and getting some sense of freedom. My friends and I were having this golden, picture perfect summer where we were trying to make the most of our time together and going on all these fun adventures. I was in the best part of the relationship that I was in at the time. I had a fun job at an ice cream place that I basically ran with a couple friends and made enough money with zero financial responsibilities aside from car-related stuff so that I was able to afford everything I wanted to do without worrying about it. There was nothing bad happening in my life, nothing I felt was really lacking in those categories you break your life down into to judge it by: career, finances, social life, love life, family, health, home. One or more of those things are always completely tanking at any other given time period or age. It's possible that if I were asked this question later, though, that I might say now. There are a couple of those categories that are not going great, but if I completely ignored everything that was happening in the world, my life in the past year and a half or so is the closest I've come so far to how I've always imagined it.
Focus: I think that 18, 21, and 28 were the best years of my life. In terms of multi-year stretches, the five years between my 18th and 23rd birthdays were the best. As others have noted we were stupid back then, but it was so much fun. It was also much easier to meet people when I was in college. College roommates meant that you were at least guaranteed drinking buddies, if not friends. Of course, I was lucky that my only bad experiences with college roommates were with people who I already knew before I moved in with them. I don't know what it was about 28, but everything just seemed to go right for me after the five years between 23 and 28 were hell. I completed my first year of grad school, took a couple of fun trips when I hadn't done a lot of traveling before, was eating healthy and enjoying it (mostly paleo/organic), went on my first date since undergrad, and got a new job that I'm still at (but I really need to find another one). It didn't last long, though, as the reality has set in in terms of how badly the odds are stacked against me in the job and relationship departments. If the circumstances were better I'm sure that now (I'll be 32 in October) would be very good.